I'm having my first AG brewday tomorrow. It's GW exmoor gold clone. In the recipe it says to mash and boil for 90 mins - will it make much difference if I mash and boil for an hour? Many thanks in advance for your expert opinions.
1st ag-exmoor gold clone help
- Thread starter robster62
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Having also started with GW's 90 min appeoach, I now do 60 mins for each with no real detriment. Main thing is brew wont be as bitter from early hop additions so may need to recompute using online calculator to hit yhe intended IBU. This is recommended anyay IMHO as often the AA % of my hops is v different to book.
Having put the recipe in brewers friend it came out as 48 IBU's rather than 40 with the Challenger hops I have so will try again with 60 minute boil. Does mash time make any difference as I believe most sugars are released in first 15 minutes of mash?
First ever ag in the Fv thanks to new robobrew expected 1047 achieved 1050 6th
. Now all I can do is wait.
. Now all I can do is wait.
Here is a take on 90m vs 60m for mashing:
The 90mins guide would probably be more relevant to a mash tun made from a Large Picnic basket sort of an arrangement, in which you add the grain to the water and dough them in. It would total 90mins, for this stage, from chucking them in (conjecture?).
Suppose you have an All-in-one system - for example a Grainfather, or if you waited a bit until the prices cam down, a Robobrew/Ace/Whatever RIMS.
In these systems you add the grain slowly, stirring every addition carefully and giving it a good stir at the end of this, with a view to driving out the air caught between the crushed grains. Them. half way through the mash, you stop the clock and unravel the kit a bit, give the grains a stir to drive out some more gases and re-assemble to proceed. Total time on the mash stage is not going to be far short of 90mins, since it is 20 mins doughing in and 2x5mins just stirring, plus the 2x30min periods when the recirculation pump is on and clearly operating.
As regards boiling, I have fewer transparent ideas, but would suggest that:
Cheap high Alpha "Bittering" hops make the necessity of a long boil somewhat irrelevant, and
Concentrating or caramelising the wort can now be addressed in different ways - larger and better, more efficient mashing systems and the availability of malts of graduated colouration.
The Exmoor Gold recipe is a great one, very similar to the one for Hop Back Summer Lightening. I've done this a couple of times and this time of year is a good time to brew one. It should be ideal for our promised early summer! So, good luck!
Thanks for the insights, I will keep you all informed. Transferring to the Fv I ended up with a very large head of froth lol.
Activity in the fv seems to have stopped and it looks like it's clearing. Only brewed it Wednesday will take reading next Wednesday and think about bottling Friday if it's finished. Is this normal with SO-4 yeast?
